UPCOMING EVENTS

Distimo, a company that sells tools for app store analytics, released today its December Report, a State of the Union of application development, with a number of interesting findings about who’s developing apps and what they’re selling them for.

Much of what Distimo focused on was the geography of application developers. They found some surprising numbers. A full 65% of application developers in the Android Market are in the United States. Distimo thinks the number might be explained by the fact that paid applications have been available longer in the US.

The rest of the world seems to be trying to make up for that, though. Distimo found that among the four major developer areas (the Euro Zone, Japan, UK and US), the United States had the second-cheapest average application price in the Android Market. Applications developed in the Euro Zone cost an average of $4.42, fifty percent more than the American average of $2.96.

When Distimo expanded its search to compare the price of applications for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia platforms in addition to Android, a huge spread emerged. BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones, the two platforms most commonly used in business settings, crushed all competitors with average application prices of $8.26 for BlackBerries and $6.99 for Windows Mobile (though Blackberry’s number might be explained by their requirement that all apps either cost at least $2.99 or are free, so all the $.99 applications don’t bring the average down like for other platforms).

iPhone, Android, and Nokia applications were close in price, and priced much lower, at $3.62, $3.27, and $3.47 respectively. Android may be headed on the upswing, though, if they can work out their issues with Google Checkout.

Who’s buying all those $7 apps for Windows Mobile? Mostly Americans. There are a total of 812 applications available for Windows Mobile (compared to more than 100,000 for iPhones), 639 of which are available in the US. The next most app-rich country, the United Kingdom, only has 264 applications available.

There’s also a list of the most-purchased applications on each platform, with a few notable trends: messaging is big everywhere, and so is Pandora Radio. Smartphone owners love their games, and judging by the number of times solitaire and Facebook appear on the top 10 lists, don’t work nearly as hard as they seem when they’re tapping on their phones.

Distimo’s monthly reports, which are frequently full of telling information about the app world, shows that there’s a global, growing market for smartphones and applications, and that people are paying good money for applications to use on their phones. For Distimo, which helps companies understand and take advantage of the mobile application ecosystem, that bodes pretty well.